EVERY STATE has shortcomings that its residents don't like to talk about. Wherever you live, I'm sure there are local embarrassments you'd prefer not to see broadcast in the national media -- monster pig farms, a demented governor, whatever. I myself grew up in a Midwestern city that once elected Jerry Springer mayor, and you don't see me bringing it up every time I go back there to visit.

Nevertheless, we've got to have a little discussion about New York election laws. The state Republican Party has fixed the March 7 presidential primary so that John McCain is finding it almost impossible to get on the ballot. If you like McCain, that ought to make you angry. If you like George W. Bush you ought to be angry, too. The man has pots and pots of money and the endorsement of every powerful Republican in the state. You don't want people thinking that with all that, he still needs to slash the other team's tires to win.

The Republicans are just operating within the local political culture, which says that the only good election is an uncontested election. In most of America, the person with the most votes wins. Here, the person with the best election lawyer throws everybody else off the ballot.

To run in the Republican presidential primary in New York you've got to put together a delegate slate in every one of the state's 31 congressional districts, some of which have more politically active Zoroastrians than Republicans. Workers residing in each of these districts then have the month of December to collect signatures of local party members, in rigid conformance to the incredibly picky election law standards.

Four years ago, organizers for Steve Forbes got his signatures in heavily Democratic New York City districts by recruiting unemployed minority teenagers, registering them as Republicans and paying them sizable weekly salaries to go door-to-door. "It was a political 'Stand and Deliver,' " one of the organizers told me proudly. "It would have made a great movie."

Well, it's hard to envision a feel-good movie that ends with Steve Forbes qualifying for the New York primary ballot. Nevertheless, it was nice knowing that the state's election laws were finally being used to create jobs for somebody besides election lawyers. This year the Forbes campaign is paying $12 an hour for signature collectors, and expects to spend at least $750,000 getting the candidate on the New York ballot.

Only super-wealthy candidates can put together enough resources to get on the New York ballot without the support of the party organization. Forbes is about the only Republican who's managed to pull the trick off in recent history. Paul Tsongas barely qualified for the Democratic primary in 1992, and that near miss so embarrassed the party that it made its rules rational.

McCain said last week that if he failed to get on the statewide ballot, he was going to go to court. He called on Gov. George Pataki and other party leaders to disavow the rules and help all serious candidates qualify for the primary. Pataki, who reportedly nurtures hopes of being Bush's vice- presidential nominee on an All-George ticket, ignored the request.

"The Republican Party won't bend the rules to accommodate McCain while he spends time campaigning in other states," said the governor's spokeswoman. Bush, she noted, has already done mailings in New York, and made several campaign appearances. "We want this state to play a vital role in the election process," she said.

This is perhaps the only state in the union in which playing a vital role in the election process does not necessarily involve giving your party members a chance to vote.